Last updated: October 2026
To get products into ChatGPT shopping results, apply to share a product feed at chatgpt.com/merchants (OpenAI says feed onboarding is open to approved partners), keep price and stock data accurate, allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl your site, and earn reviews and mentions on sites ChatGPT reads. Paid product ads are a separate program.
Key takeaways🔗
- ChatGPT has shown shopping results since April 2025. OpenAI said they are built from "structured metadata from third parties, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews," and are not ads.
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OpenAI's developer docs say product feed onboarding "is currently available to approved partners," with applications at chatgpt.com/merchants. Shopify merchants can be included through Shopify's own integration.
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In March 2026, OpenAI moved away from Instant Checkout. Shoppers now discover products in ChatGPT and usually buy on the merchant's own site.
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A Profound study reported in September 2026 found that feed-sourced products went from about 8% to about 62% of tracked ChatGPT shopping recommendations in one day in July. OpenAI has not confirmed why.
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Product feed ads, reported in May 2026, are a separate, labeled, paid placement. OpenAI says ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers.
How does ChatGPT decide which products to show?🔗
ChatGPT picks products from structured product data plus what it finds on the web, and OpenAI has said these results are organic, not paid. That has been the official line since shopping launched.
When OpenAI added shopping to ChatGPT search on April 28, 2025, it said results come from "structured metadata from third parties, such as pricing, product descriptions, and reviews," that "ads are not part of this upgrade to ChatGPT search," and that it "won't receive a kickback from purchases made through ChatGPT search." The first categories were fashion, beauty, home goods and electronics (TechCrunch).
Two more inputs have been added since:
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Merchant product feeds. OpenAI now accepts structured feeds directly from approved merchants (more on that below).
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Shopping research. Launched November 24, 2025 for logged-in Free, Go, Plus and Pro users, it builds a buyer's guide by pulling "price, availability, reviews, specs, and images from across the web." Search Engine Journal reported that merchants can take part through an "allowlisting process" with OpenAI (Search Engine Journal).
OpenAI has not published a ranking formula. Anyone who claims to know the exact weighting of feeds, reviews and web pages is guessing.
What has OpenAI changed in ChatGPT shopping since 2025?🔗
OpenAI has changed its shopping approach several times in 18 months, so older advice may be out of date. Here is the timeline from sources we could open and check.
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 28, 2025 | Shopping results added to ChatGPT search; not ads, no commission | TechCrunch |
| Late Sep 2025 | Instant Checkout launched for US Etsy sellers, built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol with Stripe; Shopify merchants "soon" | Engadget |
| Nov 24, 2025 | Shopping research launched for logged-in users | Search Engine Journal |
| Feb 9, 2026 | Ads test began in the US on Free and Go plans | TechCrunch |
| Mar 16, 2026 | Shopify announced "agentic storefronts" for ChatGPT discovery | Digiday |
| Mar 24, 2026 | OpenAI moved away from Instant Checkout and toward discovery, with checkout on merchants' sites | TechCrunch |
| May 12, 2026 | Product feed ads reported; new partners asked for a 100-product sample | Modern Retail |
| Sep 9, 2026 | Profound data shows feed-sourced products became the majority of tracked recommendations | Search Engine Journal |
The March 2026 change matters most for planning. TechCrunch quoted OpenAI saying "the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide," and reported that shoppers would be sent to merchants' own websites to buy. Merchants can still offer checkout through their own ChatGPT apps (TechCrunch). In short: ChatGPT is a discovery channel. Your site still closes the sale.
How do you get a product feed into ChatGPT?🔗
You get a product feed into ChatGPT by applying through OpenAI's merchant program and then sending a structured feed by API or SFTP. OpenAI's developer docs say "onboarding product feeds in ChatGPT is currently available to approved partners," and link to chatgpt.com/merchants to apply (OpenAI).
The feed's stated purpose is to let "ChatGPT accurately index and display your products with up-to-date price and availability" (OpenAI). OpenAI recommends "uploading a full snapshot at least once a day."
The feed spec lists nine required fields for each item or variant (OpenAI):
| Field | What to put in it |
|---|---|
item_id | A stable, unique ID per item or variant |
title | Product name, including the variant where relevant |
description | A factual product description |
url | A stable product page URL |
brand | The brand as shown on the product page |
seller_name | Who supplies the offer |
image_url | The main image for that variant |
availability | in_stock, out_of_stock, pre_order, backorder or unknown |
price | The regular price |
A few details worth knowing from the same spec:
- Search eligibility is a flag.
is_eligible_searchset to true makes a product eligible for search. Setting it to false also turns off checkout eligibility.
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Ratings can go in the feed. Optional
review_countandstar_ratingfields carry your aggregate review data. OpenAI notes that "raw review entries and question-and-answer lists are not part of this discovery contract," so individual reviews still come from the web. -
Sales need updates. The spec says to "update the feed when a sale starts or ends" and to update availability when stock changes.
What is unconfirmed: OpenAI does not publish its approval criteria, how long approval takes, which countries are supported, or whether feed products rank higher than products found on the web. Modern Retail reported that OpenAI asks new partners to "submit a sample of 100 products before sharing their full catalog" (Modern Retail). OpenAI declined to comment for that story.
Do Shopify stores need to apply separately?🔗
Shopify stores may not need to, because Shopify connects eligible products to ChatGPT through its own data. Digiday reported in March 2026 that, according to Shopify, merchants do not need their own ChatGPT apps, and that eligible products become available through Shopify's existing integration using the Agentic Commerce Protocol (Digiday).
The same report noted a wording gap. Shopify said buyers could "complete purchases inside ChatGPT," while OpenAI clarified that this refers to discovery, with checkout usually on the merchant's storefront. Check your Shopify admin for the current ChatGPT setting, since eligibility rules are Shopify's to set.
If you sell on another platform (WooCommerce, BigCommerce, a custom build), the direct route is the application at chatgpt.com/merchants.
How much do product feeds matter for ChatGPT shopping visibility?🔗
Product feeds appear to matter a lot, based on the one large dataset we could find. Search Engine Journal reported on September 9, 2026, that Profound tracked 1,757,723 ChatGPT shopping prompt runs in July and classified each product by where ChatGPT got it (Search Engine Journal). Its findings:
- Feed-sourced products jumped from 8.26% to 61.54% of recommendations on July 10, and were about 65% by early September.
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The top 10 merchants' share of references rose from 22.5% to 41.8%.
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Unique merchants referenced fell from 13,524 to 10,607.
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450 of Profound's 687 tracked customers lost at least a third of their shopping visibility between July 7 to 9 and July 10 to 12.
Two cautions. First, this is one vendor's data set, built from its own customers' prompts. Second, the shift lines up with a model release, but OpenAI has not said the two are linked. Still, the direction is clear enough to act on: if your products are not in a feed ChatGPT can read, you are competing for a shrinking share of web-sourced slots.
Are ChatGPT shopping ads the same as shopping results?🔗
No, ads are a separate, paid placement. When OpenAI started testing ads on February 9, 2026, it said "ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you" and that they are "clearly labeled as sponsored and separated from the organic content." The test ran on Free and Go plans in the US (TechCrunch).
In May 2026, Modern Retail reported that retailers can connect a product catalog, choose which items are eligible and have ChatGPT generate ads from product names, images and attributes. The ads appear below ChatGPT responses and are labeled as sponsored (Modern Retail). OpenAI's feed spec has a separate is_ads_eligible flag for this (OpenAI).
| Organic shopping results | Product feed ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Paid |
| How you get in | Feed (approved partners), Shopify integration, or the open web | Ads program with a catalog |
| Labeled sponsored | No | Yes |
| Placement | Inside the answer and product carousels | Below the response |
| Influences the answer | Yes, it is the answer | OpenAI says no |
What should a store do this month?🔗
Do the steps you control first, then apply for the feed. This is the order we would follow for a US store.
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Allow OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" (OpenAI). Check robots.txt and your CDN's bot settings.
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Clean up product data. Factual titles that include the variant, real descriptions, accurate prices and stock status, and Product schema on each product page. These are the same fields the feed asks for, so the work is not wasted.
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Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants, or check your Shopify ChatGPT setting if you are on Shopify.
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Earn reviews and third-party mentions. OpenAI named reviews as an input from day one. Get listed on the review sites, "best of" roundups and Reddit threads in your category. Our ecommerce AI search visibility guide covers this in detail.
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Test buyer questions. Ask ChatGPT what a shopper would ask, such as "best carry-on suitcase under $200," and record which products and stores appear. Repeat monthly with the same wording.
For broader brand work beyond product carousels, see how to get mentioned in ChatGPT, and our Bing SEO for ChatGPT guide for the search side.
We build TrendlyAI, so weigh this: TrendlyAI tracks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews name your brand or competitors in answers. It does not track product carousels or ads specifically. To see where your brand stands today, the free TrendlyAI check runs 5 prompts on ChatGPT and Perplexity in about 30 seconds with no signup. Our GEO hub covers each engine.
Frequently asked questions🔗
Can I pay to appear in ChatGPT shopping results?🔗
Not in the organic results. OpenAI said when shopping launched that results are not ads, and says ads do not influence answers. Paid product feed ads exist as a separate placement, labeled sponsored and shown below the response.
How do I submit my products to ChatGPT?🔗
Apply at chatgpt.com/merchants. OpenAI's developer docs say feed onboarding is open to approved partners, who send a structured feed by API or SFTP. Shopify merchants may be included through Shopify's own integration.
Is Instant Checkout still available in ChatGPT?🔗
Not as a main feature. In March 2026, OpenAI said the first version of Instant Checkout lacked the flexibility it wanted and shifted focus to product discovery. Shoppers now usually buy on the merchant's site, and merchants can offer checkout through their own ChatGPT apps.
Does ChatGPT use Google Shopping feeds?🔗
OpenAI has not said so. It describes using structured metadata from third parties and feeds from approved merchants. The required fields in OpenAI's feed are similar to other shopping feeds, so an existing feed is a good starting point, but it must follow OpenAI's spec.
How often should I update my ChatGPT product feed?🔗
OpenAI recommends uploading a full snapshot at least once a day, and updating the feed when a sale starts or ends or when stock changes.